


Child of the Flashpoint

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: When Diggle forces it out of Felicity that in the original timeline he had a daughter instead of a son, he can't help but wonder what might have been, much as he knows he shouldn't. Years later, his son finds out too.





	

Felicity hadn’t wanted to mention anything. Diggle had forced it out of her when he’d happened to walk in on her on the phone with Barry Allen, where she’d happened to mention something about how he’d somehow changed the timeline, and when she’d hung up he’d asked her about it.

“Huh, I wonder if anything about me has changed because of what he did,” Diggle had asked when Felicity had explained, and there had been this look on her face that she wasn’t quick enough to hide, a look that had made it clear to him that she did know something, and eventually he managed to get her to admit that in the original timeline, his son John didn’t exist, and instead he and Lyla had had a daughter who they’d named Sara.

Sara….Diggle could even remember at the time, how John had been born around the time that Sara Lance was killed, and he’d said to Lyla that if John had been a girl, he would have suggested Sara for her name. Instead, he had chosen Andrew John Diggle, to honour the memory of the brother who, at that time, he still believed dead, although they’d dropped the Andrew after discovering his role in Laurel’s death, figuring that at the age their son was, he’d not really become accustomed to the name and would never know any different.

He found himself wondering how this child would have turned out, the unknown Sara Diggle. Would she have had his eyes and Lyla’s mouth as their son did, or would she have had any other combination of their features? Would she have inherited his stubbornness, or Lyla’s sense of humour? Diggle found himself imagining her growing up over the years, watching her in school plays, cheering her on at sports, waving her off the night of her school prom and telling her date in no uncertain terms to have her back by curfew. 

Diggle told himself he wouldn’t think about it any more. Sara didn’t exist in this timeline, and she never would. He wouldn’t let it affect the relationship he’d have with his son. But a part of him would probably always wonder what might have been.

 

Sara Diggle may never have existed, but John Diggle Jr. hated her.

He’d been in trouble once for sneaking out of the house for some party, and had happened to overhear a remark made by his father about whether they would have had the same thing with Sara. His dad hadn’t wanted to explain it, but when John had kept asking questions and wouldn’t let it go, he’d eventually had to admit the truth of the Flashpoint timeline.

John wondered now whether, every time his father had been hard on him over the years, whether he was secretly wishing he still had the child named Sara instead, whether every time he expressed disapproval of one of John’s friends, told him off for a bad grade, he was wondering whether things would have been different had Sara still been there, just as he had said on that day. Well, Sara wasn’t there, John was. And there was nothing anyone could do about it now, not unless Dad’s stupid friend Barry wanted to create a whole new timeline.

John had never been going to bring it up with his dad. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind, started acting out more and more, staying away from the house because he just couldn’t bear to be around his dad knowing he wasn’t the child his dad wanted, and eventually there had come a day when he’d blurted it out in an argument. His father had apologised for ever making that remark where John could hear it, said that while he had to admit that he still sometimes wondered what Sara would have been like, if he was given the chance to go back and change things, he wouldn’t. John was the child he had known and loved for all those years, the child he would always be proud of, and it didn’t matter what Barry Allen had done, he wouldn’t want things to be any different.

Maybe things wouldn’t get better overnight. But they had come to an understanding now, and John knew things would get better in time.


End file.
